Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies

Issue Number

Latest documents

• The José Antonio Díaz Peláez Experimental Art School and the Artwork of Yasser Garcia Rittoles

  Photo essay featuring the work of and behind the scences photos from Rittoles.

• Don Simón Luna
• Recuerdos de Nicaragua
• Dividing Lines
• An Interplay of Shadows and Light
• Groundings in Cuba

  This brief essay places Rodney in the context of the development of trans-Atlantic African Diaspora consciousness and culture, and the development of non-Western contingent Marxist theories from dependency to his underdevelopment thesis. Rodney’s biography and intellectual development are contextualized in their Caribbean, Latin American and Diasporic Black contexts, and in the context of Rodney’s engagement with people, pedagogy and political processes in Jamaica, Tanzania, London and Guyana. Specifics of his Cuban sojourns and evolving conceptions of the revolution, his work on a book while there, and his placement within Cuban research and broader Caribbean and Latin American tendencies are examined.

• Two Republics in Conflict
• For My Teacher, Walterio Carbonell

  This essay is dedicated to Walterio Carbonell (1920-2008), the controversial Afro-Cuban Marxist thinker, on the 50th year of the publication of his masterpiece Como Surgió la Cultura Nacional (“On The Emergence of National Culture”). It was published in a 1961, a year marked by the official declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution, the victory of Playa Girón (the “Bay of Pigs”), and the launching of a massive literacy campaign. Carbonnell’s text confronts the traditional version of Cuban history, which assigns the leading role of the gestation of Cuban nationality to an enlightened aristocracy of White Creoles of Spanish origin. According to this version, such intellectual groups generated an ideology of independence that led to the beginning of the anti-colonial wars against Spain in 1868. Today, this explanation, with slight modifications, continues to be the most widespread in Cuba.

• Front Matter

  Includes cover, credits, and TOC.

• Critical Perspectives on Race and Revolution:

  Ethnographer, choreographer and poet Rogelio Martínez Furé (August 1937- October 2022), whose written and performed excavations of the idiosyncracies and fugitivities of interwoven African and Cuban cultural and spiritual tapestries is as timeless in acumen as unbounded in fecundity, leaves a legacy of emancipatory erudition. Zanj honors his memory by giving voice to those who, from the pulpits of scholarship to the archives of orality and the credos of everyday struggle, forage Cuban history for clues to the mysteries and palimpsests of identity. We are indebted to his patient disavowal of the shackles of epistemic colonialism, linguistic and disciplinary silos, and to his knowledge of sacred and profane Afro-diasporic storytelling. 2012 was the year of the bicentennial of the Yoruba-descended carpenter José Aponte’s planned rebellion for freedom against slavery, the centennial of the uprising and repression of the Independent Party of Color led by mambi veterans Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonnet, and the founding of the community-based Red Barrial Afrodescendiente (Afro-Descendant Neighborhood Network) in Cuba.

Featured documents

• "Amar beton khub e kom"

  The 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development explicitly links the goal of reducing inequality between and within countries to the encouragement of orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration. Yet to date there has been little discussion on how migration processes, especially those which occur...

• Sensing On the Move

  This article is a presentation of, and reflection on the documentary film Music Across Borders. It draws on understandings from oral traditions of the Aŋlɔ-Eʋe language2 , storytelling and music making to discuss ways of making meaning of the everydayness of life in migration in the Global South....

• From Civil Rights To Black Power: The Hidden History Of Black Community College Activism In Chicago

  During the rise of the Black Power movement, the Afro-American History Club fought for control of Chicago’s Woodrow Wilson Junior College, by challenging the viability of the college’s mostly Eurocentric curriculum for Black students. In doing so, they found themselves in public battles with...

• An Interplay of Shadows and Light
• Don Simón Luna
• Un Panorama des Inégalités Liées à la Migration entre le Burkina Faso et la Côte d’Ivoire

  En se basant sur une analyse descriptive des résultats de l’enquête quantitative du projet MIDEQ (Migration pour le développement et l’égalité), le présent article a pour but d’identifier les inégalités en lien avec la migration Burkina Faso-Côte d’Ivoire. La mobilité entre les deux pays est...

• Kurdayetî and Kurdish Nationalism: The Need for Distinction

  This article seeks to contextualize Kurdayetî (Kurdishness) in the broader debate on Kurdish nationalism. Existing accounts lack a clear definition of Kurdayetî and seldom contextualize it; yet treat Kurdayetî as a full-fledged Kurdish nationalism. As a result, the existing scholarship erroneously...

• The PKK's Newroz: Death and Moving Towards Freedom for Kurdistan

  The PKK's patronage of Newroz has changed its historical and contextual development. Previous studies have shown how the PKK made Newroz into a festival for Kurdish ‘counter hegemony', but have not paid sufficient attention to the performance of the celebration itself and its concurrent role in the ...

• Pushed to the Margins

  Ethiopian immigrants in South Africa are increasingly occupying informal trading space in townships, rural areas and in select central business districts across the country. This article documents the experiences of Ethiopian migrants in the informal sector in South Africa. Theoretically, the...

• Constituting Histories Through Culture In Iraqi Kurdistan

  Today, Kurds in Northern Iraq are employing a narrative of the Kurdish nation that bears strong ethnic roots and includes the memory of the victimization of the Kurdish nation. This essay examines the repurposing of the National Museum at Amna Suraka in Iraqi Kurdistan, from its former role as a Ba'...